The relatively late date of Papias (145-160 A.D.) makes it certain that for him, if not already for Polycarp, to. \6yia meant the precepts of Jesus as embodied in narrative Gospels, pre-eminently in canonical Matthew. In later authorities, who take over the tradition, the term is gradually extended to cover the embodying narrative as well, until with Irenreus and Tertullian the Divine utterance is coextensive with the canonical Gospel (' ait Spiritus Sanctus per Matthseum,' applied by Irena'us to utterances of the Evangelist). Whether at a stage anterior to its adoption by Papias the tradition regarding the \6yia had a narrower ap- plication, must be settled by a consideration of the expression in its context.
3. Tradition on transmission of the Sayings. — The fragments from the preface {■n-pooi/j.i.oi') of Papias' work in five books, entitled Exposition{s ?) of the Oracles of the Lord, as given by Eusebius {HE III. xxxix. 2. 16), are closely related to one another, and to the passage already referred to in the Epistle of Polycarp, Papias' earlier contem- poi'ary and friend. As regards the ' command- ments ' which Papias sought to hear and to expound as ' oracles,' the fragment states as a tradition (probably from the same authority, ' John the Elder,' who gave that regarding Mark) that ' Matthew made a compend {ffwerd^aro, v.l. (rvveypd- ^aro) of the logia in the Hebrew (Aramaic?) tongue, and every man translated them as he was able.' For Papias, and a fortiori for the later authorities who repeat the tradition in partly independent forms, it was a testimony to our canonical Matthew. This to them represented the syntagma of which the tradition spoke, though it was admitted not to be identical with it. That was in ' Hebrew,' this in Greek. Possibly a differ-
ence of contents as regards the narrative frame- work was also recognized, since Papias has no scruple in contradicting Mt 27'"'" (cf. Lightfoot- Harmer, Apvst. Fathers, Frgt. xviii. ), and Jerome recognizes the independence of what lie regarded as the ipsiim, Rcbraicum, and which was in his day ' called by most the authentic Gospel of Matthew,' by translating it anew into both Greek and Latin. Surviving fragments, however, prove this work, the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews, to have been anotlier and much later product. In Papias' time the Hebrew syntagma had disap- peared from use {iipfj,rjv€vaev), if ever known in his region ; his idea of its relation to canonical Mt. was probably as vague as his successors'. He valued the tradition because it gave him Apostolic authority for the Gospel on which he relies in all known instances for his logia of the Lord (Frgt. xi. ibid, is not related, as Lightfoot supposed, to Lk 10'^, but to Mt 12-^"-^; see Heads against Caitts, Frgt. v., and cf. Apollinaris, Frgt. ii. in Chron. Pasch.). It also gave him a convenient explana- tion for their variation of form in the Greek Gospels current in his own day (Mt., Lk. ) ; both went back to a common Apostolic original, but were more or less perfectly translated.
4. Criticism of the tradition. — Modern critics attribute gi-eat value to the tradition reported by Papias, partly because of its inapplicability to canonical Mt. , which shows it to be in his hands an heirloom, not a manufacture ; partly because it is independently attested ; partly because it seems to be connected internally with tlie tradition con- cerning Mark explicitly ascribed to ' the Elder ' (John of Jerusalem [d. A.D. 117]), and in that relation becomes both intelligible and historically probable in view of known conditions in the Pales- tinian Church.
Its inapplicability to canonical Mt. appears in that our Mt. is not a translation, whether from Hebrew or Aramaic ; not (strictly) a syntagma of the Oracles ; and, as concerns derivation from immediate ' followers of the Lord,' less authentic in its 'order' than Mk., since practically its entire historical outline is borrowed from our Second Gospel with arbitrary alteration (in chs. 1-14) of the order (see the Introductions to NT). The tradition is also attested, however, by Pan- tsenus (ap. Eus. HE V. x. 3), Irenseus, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Theo- phylact, Jerome, Augustine, and Euthymius Ziga- benus. Not all of these can have derived all their data from Papias, so that the tradition cannot be his invention, although he clearly adapts it to his own use (cf. a>s ^(p-qv in the Mk. fragment, referring probably to an inference of his OAvn from 1 P 5" [Eus. HE II. xv. 2, III. xxxix. 16]. Finally, the internal evidence of the tradition itself indicates a close relation to the testimony of 'the Elder' as to Mk., and agrees with known conditions in the Palestinian Church.
(a) Holsten has pointed out (Drei urspr. Evang., ad init.) that the original motive of the Mark fragment is apologetic and hai'monistic. It ac- counts for the incomi^leteness and lack of system in Mk. by contrast with some other writing which could be regarded as a complete a-vvra^Ls rQv KvpiaKwv \bywv. No such compendium did Mark make, but only a transcript of certain discourses of Peter, accurate and complete so far as secondary testi- mony could go, but suffering from the inevitable limitations of one who had been a follower, not of the Lord (like Matthew), but, ' as I (Papias) said, of Peter, afterward.' The result was a mingled account of narratives about Christ, now a saying, now something done (?) Xex^^''T") ^ irpaxdevra), incomplete (ivi.a, 8(7a ifxvriixovevaev) and without system (oi) ixivroi Ta^ei.), because Peter's preaching,